Wham, bam, thank you ma'am - it's roller derby
 Fatal Booty of the Botoxic Avengers has a day job as visual arts manager at the Riverdale Y, where she’s known as Janine Intervallo. Photo by Joshua Bright |
By Jason Eisenberg
During the day, Jenny Smith Mohammed is a stay-at-home mom, who cooks, cleans and takes care of her two young sons. But for a few nights a week, the Riverdale resident goes by a different name — Domestic Violet — the costumed- captain of the Indian Point Sirens, an all-women roller derby team.
On Saturday, her squad faced off against the Botoxic Avengers for the Suburbia Roller Derby League’s inaugural championship. The event is as much of a show as it is a sport.
Some of the players have white face paint, others bright red or black lipstick. They wear fishnet stockings, black and green vests, tank tops and short-shorts, or one-piece nurse uniforms that feature fake bloodstains. They have names like “Fatal Booty” and “Pony Girl.”
In addition to Mohammed, three of the players on the track that night live or work in Riverdale. The women have found a connection and an interesting way to have fun while also staying in shape.
“I watched roller derby as a kid and thought it was kind of crazy then, but now here I am doing it myself,” said Mohammed, who has lived in Riverdale since she was 12 and developed her skills by skating around the Jerome Park Reservoir.
Traffic jam
For those who are not familiar with roller derby, the sport involves one skater from each team — called a jammer — who must try to make her way through a pack of eight skaters, which includes four teammates and four opponents, as they travel around a circular flat track. The jammer scores points for each opponent they pass on the track, while the pack skaters are responsible for blocking the other team’s jammer as well as helping their own get through the crowd.
Along the way, there are plenty of spills, hard collisions, trips and body checks, not much different than what would be seen at a typical ice hockey game. “It is definitely a rough and competitive sport,” said Mohammed. “One time I got whiplash so bad that I was unable to move my neck or even brush my teeth and I swore I would never do it again, but in the end there was just no way I was going to quit.”
Not only is Mohammed a committed member of this new league, which holds its bouts at E.J. Murray Memorial Skating Center in Yonkers, but she also helped recruit two fellow Riverdalians to join her. One of them, Liz Rosenthal, joined the Sirens, while the other, Elizabeth Saavedra, went to the rival Botoxic Avengers.
Rosenthal makes her living as a bartender and real estate agent, but when she steps onto the roller derby track she becomes “Pony Girl,” an homage to the character of Ponyboy Curtis in S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. She credits growing up in the 1970s roller disco era as the reason she got interested in skating and eventually roller derby. While she acknowledges that many people, including her own family, think it is silly and weird, all of the skaters actually take it very seriously.
“Yes, wearing the costumes and fishnets and makeup is fun and maybe a bit campy,” said Rosenthal, a Riverdale resident for more than 20 years. “But once that whistle blows, it is all about the sport and trust me, both sides will do whatever it takes to win.”
Ignoring advice
As for Saavedra, also known as “Rita Wayward” — a play on the name of actress Rita Hayworth — she was hooked from the very first time she put on the skates.
“Everybody told me not to do it, that I was going to get myself killed, and in the beginning I definitely took some hits which were reality checks and made me question my sanity,” said the Web developer and mother of two. “I basically had to give up my social life to get my skating time in, but right now I am in the best shape of my life, with muscles I never knew I had, so it has been well worth it.”
Janine Intervallo, the last of the Riverdale quartet, has perhaps the most unique explanation for choosing her skater name of “Fatal Booty.”
“In roller derby, one of the best ways to block or hit somebody is with your butt,” Intervallo explained. “I just happen to be blessed in that area of my body so it seemed like the perfect name.”
Intervallo is the visual arts manager at the Riverdale YM-YWHA as well as an art teacher at the Riverdale Community Center. Intervallo has been on the Botoxic Avengers roster since early in the season and has attended several team practices, but because of time conflicts, the championship match was her first appearance in a competitive bout. she was not nervous and certainly did not hide her main reason for joining the league.
“Hitting people, that is what attracted me, because it is a good way to get out your aggression,” Intervallo said. “But in addition to that, I am an active person and a good roller skater, plus I knew this league was run entirely by women, so it offered the chance to meet other girls like me.”
The league’s head referee, Sean Fleming — better known as “Motor Psycho” — also lives in Riverdale. A men’s roller derby skater himself, Fleming was more than willing to use his experience in the sport and knowledge of the rules to help out as a volunteer.
“Being a roller derby referee is a lot harder than it looks, especially as a guy working an all-women league,” he said. “This championship bout is a perfect indication of how rough and tough these women are and since I tend to be a pretty strict referee, they have no problem getting in my face when they disagree with my calls.”
‘Fatal Booty’
Despite the torrential rains and flooding from tropical storm Hanna, a good-sized crowd attended the championship bout. The group of close to 200 spectators included friends, family members and several Riverdale Y employees who came out to cheer for “Fatal Booty” in her first derby bout. The event, a back-and-forth match that featured both teams taking and losing several leads, came down to the final seconds.
Down by two points, the Botoxic Avengers scored four points on the final jam with less than 10 seconds to go and skated away with a miraculous 90-88 victory. “Rita Wayward” was one of the first Avengers to hold the championship trophy — which was appropriately made out of dozens of bronzed roller skate wheels — while Sirens captain “Domestic Violet” pondered what might have been.
“Of course it is disappointing now that they have the bragging rights,” Violet said after the bout, “But all of us are friends off the track, so the important thing is we had fun and that this league had an incredibly successful debut season, with hundreds of people showing up to watch each of our bouts and having a great time.”
This is part of the September 11, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.
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